About Todd Carter's WebLog

Since I work on ASP.NET and this is such a hot technology I thought I would try to write about my experiences. My job allows me the privilege of working with some of the largest corporate customers running ASP.NET, and because of my position I am exposed to some of the most challenging issues. About like solving a really hard puzzle I really only want to resolve these issues once and move onto the next. So the idea here is to share what I have learned and the techniques and tools leveraged to help those in the community and try to prevent such issues in the future.

After being push and prodded by my friends I have decided to join the Twitter community @Toddca . I am still a bit confused on how to follow a thread/conversation but I am sure that is just me. :-)
Now lets see how dumb I can make myself look in 140...

MOSS uses ASP.Net session state for Forms Services, Project Server, etc. SharePoint installs a PartitionResolver which redirects the ASP.NET session state module to look to the SSP DB for its stored procedures and tables for storage of session state....

When running within a website that uses impersonation you find it necessary sometimes to have your code stop impersonating for a period of time while you run some code. For example if you need to get off the box (not using Kerberos) and connect to another...

If you are a SharePoint Admin that is still running stsadm –o PrepareToMove before detaching a content DB AND your farm is running at least the Infrastructure Update (IU) then stop! Stop running the command, its not necessary and it is causing you problems...

Like most folks I customize my computer to fit my needs. I apply a myriad of registry settings, applications, utilities, and adjustments to my machine to get the environment just the way I like. One item I always seem to change is the buffer height of...

I was recently asked by a customer how to use a PropertySchema field value within a RenderPatten's CAML to control how a field is rendered. The idea is to create a new instance of the field and have some method to control how that field will be rendered...

Unfortunately it is not possible to update/patch SharePoint without occurring some amount downtime. So the only options available to us are to minimize downtime.
I think of downtime in two ways, 'not available' and 'reduced functionality'. The second...

I am a big fan of anything that gives me more insight as to what is happening on my system. One such IIS 6 tweak which I find is greatly overlooked is the additional AppPool logging you can get out of IIS 6. It blows me away that this was not "on" by...

I have spent a good deal of time lately working with one of my MOSS 2007 customers on a database disconnect issue that has been plaguing them since SPS 2003. The following blog entry are the steps I went through to track down this issue. It was not without...

I am frequently asked about the various .Net framework versions floating around. As the .Net framework continues to go through its various revs the waters will only become muddier. Here is a quick overview of each version we have to date…
.Net 1.0 ...

Probably one of the worst KB articles I have seen lately introduces, what has the potential to be a really exciting new feature of WSS 3.0/4.0 – Remote Blob Storage (RBS). This interface allows the storage of "blobs" outside of SQL server in a kind of...

Up to this point Microsoft has always required customers to make a phone call into Microsoft Product Support to receive a hotfix. Today we have made available a web application that allows customers to fill out a simple web form and receive the hotfix...

Recently I have been looking into MOSS related certifications and ran across the MCTS certifications. I have narrowed the huge list of certifications and exams down to just those that are MOSS 2007 and WSS V3 specific and have provided links below.
...

Since coming to Developer Support in 2003 I have been working with ASP.NET and IIS. 4 years in any group at Microsoft is a good stint and it was time that I moved on. Because I love working with .Net and web technologies SharePoint seemed like a likely...

Question:
So what happens when you have an x64 development box running Windows 2003 R2 x64 Enterprise with IIS6 in WOW64mode and you want to install the 32bit version of WSS 3.0?
Answer:
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Setup Errors
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Recently an issue came up where an admin was upgrading their Windows 2003 Server OS from 32bit to 64bit but they wanted to keep their ASP.NET application as is and running under WOW. The issue they hit was with monitoring performance counters. While using...

I just completed building my first MSS07 application and I thought I would jot down my thoughts and findings.
My Application
My application is very simple, I only take one piece of information from the user, query a database via a web service and...

Recently I was asked how one could share session state between two ASP.NET 2.0 applications. Well I had to be totally honest; I had never even looked into this and really did not know why one would want to do this. Well when I was queried about a solution...

Carlo was kind enough to include me in his recent "tagging" activity. So here are 5 things you probably don't know about me:
I recently graduated from SMU with a masters in software engineering.
I own an XBOX but I cannot play it for more than...

The other day I had a friend of mine approach me about a possible bug he had found in the CLR memory perfomance counters. He pointed me to a performance log where his customer had captured a log that showed that the Bytes in All Heaps exceeded that of...

Today I ran across an issue that my good buddy Tess hit with one of her customers a while back. The application in question here is an ASP.NET web application that is exhibiting fairly high memory usage after almost a day of usage (approx 400-500 MB)...

Today I am back from a 6 month project working on NGIM (Next Generation Incident Management). It is Microsoft's next version of its technical support tool used by Commercial Technical Support personal globally to work and track customer issues. Look for...